Rule of Rose Mysteries

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We don’t have any evidence that the grey dress worn by “older” Jennifer throughout the game relates in any way to Jennifer’s “real” life as an adult outside of her dream. In fact, the red broach that Jennifer wears from the dream’s beginning signals us that “older” Jennifer is probably NOT dressed as she dresses outside of her dream: Jennifer threw that red brooch away as a child (”The Funeral” chapter). It doesn’t really make a lot of sense that she would somehow be wearing the red brooch (and not knowing its significance) years later.

“Younger” Jennifer, appears to wear a dress of the same style as worn by “older” Jennifer (grey, long sleeves, and a white collar) under a white apron, in “The Funeral” chapter and in the pre-game (E3) video.

So presumably the dress worn by “older Jennifer” reflects a dress worn by Jennifer during her forgotten past.

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What about the Jennifer dolls?  We see them dressed in raggedy, irregularly sewn grey dresses that resemble Jennifer’s grey dress.

The large body size of the Jennifer-doll that we find tied to a pillar in the Filth Room (”The Little Princess” chapter) seems to mark that doll as being, at least in part, a dream reflection of “older” and “larger” Jennifer.  Older Jennifer will get tied to a post in the Filth Room of the airship (”The Unlucky Clover Field” chapter) and in the Filth Room of the orphanage (”The Funeral” chapter), and the Jennifer-doll tied the pillar foreshadows this.  But Jennifer tells us (the “Once Upon A Time” chapter) that she was tied to the pillar during her—previously—forgotten past, so the doll tied to the pillar can be said to, indirectly, reflect that as well.  But the large body size of that doll tells us that it has dream-spawned characteristics; it is a dream-reflection of “older” Jennifer.  Does this mean that no Jennifer doll actually existed in Jennifer’s forgotten past?

I don’t think so.

I’m going to propose here a hypothesis that there actually was a Jennifer-doll, and that we see that doll being bludgeoned by Amanda with a big stick during “The Rag Princess Sews” chapter.

Here’s my hypothesis.

According to the “Rag Princess” storybook, the Rag Princess (representing Amanda) sewed an ash-grey dress, out of rags, and she determined to somehow make “that girl” (representing Jennifer) wear it. The final line of the storybook is:

And thus, the Rag Princess and the girl in the rag dress became play pals.

What if this refers to Amanda sewing a dress for a Jennifer-doll?  Or a dress meant for Jennifer that ended up on a Jennifer-doll?

If so, it might be that Jennifer actually DID see Amanda beating on the Jennifer doll at sometime in her forgotten past. Amanda might have been beating on the Joshua-the-bear doll as well, for when Jennifer receives the Joshua-the-bear doll from Amanda, in “The Rag Princess Sews” chapter, the Joshua-the-bear doll is quite damaged.

We never get a full-body view of the bludgeoned Jennifer-doll of “The Rag Princess Sews” chapter. So it might be that this doll is NOT the same size as “older Jennifer” (unlike the Jennifer-doll of “The Little Princess” chapter and the Jennifer-doll bonus costume). The Jennifer-doll of “The Rag Princess Sews” chapter could have been, as the original and true Jennifer-doll, much closer to the size of “younger” Jennifer.

How and why would this Jennifer-doll have come into existence?

We will examine the clues that relate to the answer to that question in my next blog-post: “Rag Princess” Storybook (Part 6): The Sewing Project

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 5:53 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.